


The Bad Wolf Is

by i3ernadette



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 20:51:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i3ernadette/pseuds/i3ernadette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is impossible, the human-TARDIS hybrid, bound in love to a transient being - so assured in his own longevity, and so brief in the eyes of the Bad Wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bad Wolf Is

The Bad Wolf is.

Creating itself, moment to moment, dying and destroying, living and creating, time and void.

It is, was, and will be.

It is impossible, the human-TARDIS hybrid, bound in love to a transient being - so assured in his own longevity, and so brief in the eyes of the Bad Wolf.

Once it becomes, it always has been.

)))

"Doctor..." Rose Tyler is dying, gasping, blood burbling into her lungs and out on her breath.

The Doctor buries his face in her hair and tastes the copper burn of her mortality.

It wasn't supposed to be like this; she was supposed to be the lucky one, the one who stayed. He would have loved her when she was old and weary, would have taken the slow path for her and been content. The vortex gave her extra time, and she was supposed to use it.

She had done the impossible, found her way back across the rift to him, had run at his side from a thousand dangers, fingers threaded through his. 

She had lived more vividly than even he, in his wildly vivacious tenth form, could hope to do.

And then, with at least fifty years left, fifty years of infectious, irrepressible smiles and contented affection, she fell.

Fifty years of perfect moments, strung like pearls around her throat, crumpled beneath the weight of her own body.

Rose Tyler: Defender of the Earth.

"Rose, no." That's all he can say, really. A simple plea. "No."

"Yes, Doctor." The words are frail when they slip off of her tongue, but each is cored with steel.

"You can't." Not a plea. A statement of fact. She can not leave him.

"I already have, and I never will." She smiles at him, pink lips rusty, and winks.

"Can't have both; I'd go with the second." He tries to smile in response, but thinks his mouth might be broken.

"I create myself." Whispers, trauma so stark he will never forget, and someone is singing.

"Do you hear that?" He asks, knowing and fearing and hoping and ignoring.

"Doctor." She claims his attention for herself, fingers barely tightening around and between his.

"Yes, love?" The first time to say the word, and he can't even claim it for himself. But with Rose, love is not what is done. It simply is.

"Kiss me." 

Her final request, his final farewell, and the ending to a long-ago beginning.

)))

The Bad Wolf is.

From the beginning to the end, possibility and paradox driven by the hope and love of a bright-eyed nineteen-year-old with all of the time vortex swirling in her mind.

_Did you think it was coincidence, Doctor, that the TARDIS always took you to where you were needed most?_

Something chuckles, and his eyes are opened.

_Did you think it was possible, Doctor, for even a Time Lord to diminish the Bad Wolf?_

And he is there, from the beginning to the end, and he knows that he never understood.

)))

The Doctor swallows Rose Tyler's last breath, and it tastes of jelly babies and blood.

He has three lives left to live, and they will be fantastic.

And it won't matter when they end.

The Bad Wolf is.


End file.
